


(Don't) Trust Me; I'm (Not) the Doctor

by ModernWizard



Series: The Demon's Daughter [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Appendicitis, Children's literature does too, Crowley cosplays the Doctor, Crowley loves Tadfield's phone box, Dean Tyler formerly Deenie Tyler daughter of R.P. the busybody, Doctor Who jokes galore, Doctor Who references galore, For entertainment value mostly, Gen, Genderfluid Crowley, He goes with it, Heck is the Doctor's daughter, Heck saves the day, Mary Poppins - Freeform, Mary Poppins References, Mary Poppins jokes, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other, POV Warlock Dowling, People think Crowley is a doctor, Something's wrong with the tenant! (but not David), Trans Warlock, Trans Warlock Dowling, Well actually Nanny saves the day, Wicca
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-07-30 16:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20100385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: [In which Heck is 18.] Heck Dowling the witch [formerly known as Warlock] has moved back to Tadfield to be with her Hellmom Crowley and her Angeldad Aziraphale. She discovers they haven't told her everything about their lives now. Crowley, a HUGE Doctor Who fan, is mistaken for a medical doctor. He seizes the chance to play both a doctor and the [Tenth, of course!] Doctor, dragging Heck into a medical mystery, the role of the Doctor's daughter, and a reunion with an old friend. Why yes, Nanny Ashtoreth appears as well!





	1. Talk of the Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OrphielBurrito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphielBurrito/gifts), [natalunasans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalunasans/gifts).

> ineffable-bastard-crowley and ineffable-celestial-lovers got into a Tumblr chat about [what would happen if Crowley were generally mistaken for an actual medical doctor.](https://trellanyx.tumblr.com/post/186651839682/if-crowley-and-aziraphale-had-noticed-sooner-that) [This is, of course, an extrapolation from Mr. Young's addressing him as such on the night of his son's birth.] The ideas about Crowley's wacky cures entertained me. And then I realized that my version of Crowley would totally take advantage of being called "Doctor" because then he could fold it into his Doctor Who geekery. And then this story coalesced.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tadfield always buzzes with gossip. Sometimes it's about how Mr. Fell is cheating on that nice Mr. Crowley with That Other Woman. This time it's about the town's phone box. The news leaves Crowley, a huge fan of the phone box, distraught. Fortunately Ms. Cornell needs either a doctor or the Doctor, and the adventure is on!

“Oh my gods, this is such a small town! Guess what everyone’s talking about?” Hecate Frances Ashtoreth Dowling the witch (formerly known as Warlock) rolled her eyes as she bounced through Tadfield Center Park at Crowley’s side. 

Heck, as she preferred to be called, was eighteen. She had recently reunited with her Hellmom, the demon Crowley, and her Angeldad, the angel Aziraphale. They, disguised as Nanny Ashtoreth and Francis respectively, had raised her in this village from birth to age nine. Mistaking Heck for the Antichrist (long story — it would make a good novel or even a miniseries), Nanny and Francis tried to raise her so normally that she’d never kick off the End of Days. They prevented the Apocalypse (now known as the _ Apocawhoops _ or, in Heck’s contemptuous term, the _ Apocapoop), _ but they failed at doing anything normally with Heck. She grew up to be an extraordinarily weird kid who considered the family governess and gardener her true parents.

After nine years of separation and drama instigated by Thaddeus J. Dowling XVI and his (then) wife Harriet, Heck was back with her Hellmom and Angeldad — in her hometown even. She got along wonderfully with them, but the minuscule scale of Tadfield life was more of a challenge. After spending her teens in New York City, she found a village of several thousand people a significant culture shock.

“Wellllllllll, let’s see…” Crowley stared at the sky, thinking, clicking his (forked) tongue against the roof of his mouth. He drummed his fingers against his lips, walking from the hips with such a swinging gait that he might as well have had wheels instead of legs. His body, though a lanky, limber collection of sharp lines, narrow widths, and acute angles, nevertheless moved with the undulant curve of a sine wave. “Ooooh, yes, haven’t you heard?” He jumped and pointed at Heck with both hands. 

“That Other Woman,” he said, turning his voice into the breathless quack of an ancient gossip, “was spotted last Wednesday leaving Mr. Ezra Fell’s place again. Tsk tsk tsk.” He clucked his tongue. “One of these days that poor Mr. Crowley is going to find out what’s going on behind his back. And then won’t That Other Woman be sorry?”

Crowley had in current circulation three forms, each with their own gender and variation on his personality. His form of the moment, Crowley, an excitable dude trying very hard to be badass, appeared most of the time. Less frequent was Mala, a perfectly chill person and literal Serpent of Subversion. Much to Heck’s dismay, her best beloved Nanny, a self-described _ lady _ and Gothy governess extraordinaire, manifested more rarely. Tadfield residents, largely unaware of the shapeshifting demon in their midst, had a variety of theories about Nanny, of which adultery appealed to the oldest, most conservative, and most bored.

“Ummm...no.” Heck laughed. “Have you tried telling those people about polyamory?”

“Bah, it’s enough of a struggle for them to believe that gay marriage is a thing. I don’t even bother.”

“So guess! Guess!”

“Dude!” Clapping his hands to his cheeks, Crowley was suddenly impersonating someone closer to Heck’s age. “Anathema,” he gasped, naming the witch of the Pulsifer-Device couple, “turned Newt into a newt!” The Pulsifer-Devices, along with Crowley, Aziraphale, Tracy the psychic dominatrix, Shadwell the Witchfinder Sergeant, and some kids Heck’s age, had prevented the world from bungling into the Apocalypse about seven years ago. Most of them remained local to Tadfield and even kept in touch (with the exception of Shadwell, soon evicted by Tracy for flagrant misogyny). “Really — I saw it with my own eyes, man!” Crowley went on. “She’s definitely a witch, straight out of that Scottish play. I even heard her say _ Double double, toilet trouble! _once.”

“Ah hah hah hah hah! Nope. Last try?”

“That Young boy is up to no good, I tell you.” Switching back to his _ crabby old gossip _ persona, Crowley now referred to Adam, ex-Antichrist and leader of the junior Apocalypse opposition. “He’s never satisfied with the way things are. If it’s not saving the whales, it’s promoting solar power or banning fracking. Always wants to change everything. He’ll be raising Hell next. Mark my words.”

“It’s not that.” Heck shook her head. “You want to know today’s shocking exposé that has the whole town in an uproar? Here it is. They’re taking down the phone booth — _ box, _ whatever — in the park.”

Tadfield had always been a little behind the times. Nearly two decades after the fact, the town had just decided to take its first tentative step into the second millennium. To that end, the red phone box in the middle of Tadfield Center Park, neglected by 99.99999999999% of residents and visitors, was being removed. 

Heck and Crowley were, at that moment, passing the historical monument in question, so Crowley swiveled his entire torso dramatically to the right to gaze upon it. Slightly taller and narrower than a portable toilet, the phone box gleamed a vibrant _ STOP _ sign red. It had three glassed-in sides, the one opposite the phone being the door. Just below its slightly curved roof was embossed a golden crown, then the word _ TELEPHONE _ in thin black serif font on a white field.

“The phone box? _ My _ phone box?” Crowley’s expression inscribed lines of woe on his face as deep as those on a Tragedy mask. “But – That’s – They can’t – It’s not – It’s so – Why? Why? _ Why?” _

“Because no one uses phone booths anymore.”

“That’s not – You can’t say – _ I _ do!” Hands pressed to his chest, lower lip trembling in (probably) fake sorrow, Crowley faced Heck.

“You never call anyone,” pointed out Heck. “You just sit there with a silly smirk on your face, making spaceship noises! Get with the times, Mom!” She elbowed him in the ribs. “No one uses phone booths anymore...except for maybe Superman, and, while you’re super, you’re definitely not a man.”

“The Doctor uses a phone box...” Crowley murmured, his voice apparently oppressed with sadness. He was obsessed with _ Doctor Who, _ a long-running BBC TV show about the titular alien, who flew around the universe, having adventures. Their spaceship, the TARDIS, was a blue police box, but Crowley regularly pretended that the red box in the park was his TARDIS.

“Oh my gods!” With a giggle, Heck bowed her head and slapped both of her hands to her face in a hammy facepalm.

“Goodbye, old girl.” Crowley’s voice hushed as he stepped away from Heck.

“Who are you calling _ old girl?” _ Heck asked, eyes still closed.

“We had some grand old times together: riding around the rings of Saturn, bouncing through the asteroid belt of Perseus Minor,” Crowley went on. “And remember how we escaped the Daleks into Quaternion Space? Brilliant! Just brilliant!”

“You call me _ kid,” _ Heck pointed out, raising her head and opening her eyes. “Nanny calls me _ child. _ Aziraphale can say _ sweetheart _ and _ dear heart, _ but I’m pretty sure I didn’t authorize anyone calling me _ old girl!” _

Then she saw that Crowley had his arms wrapped around the phone box. He hadn’t been talking to her at all, but to his imaginary TARDIS. He glared at Heck. “Will you be quiet? I am having a _ moment _here!” He wiped under his eyes with a finger, but his mascara wasn’t running, so he was just pretending to cry.

“You’re always having a moment, Crowley. Your entire life is a series of moments, strung together with WUVS, freakouts, and the angel who puts up with it all.”

“Don’t forget my wicked, wicked hellspawn who makes fun of me every chance she can get!” Rushing as if to attack Heck, Crowley instead bundled her into a hug.

“Doctor! Doctor! Oh my God, Doctor! Doctor — !” A light, breathy voice approached, calling Crowley by the name of his favorite fictional character.

“Crowley, what — ?” Heck rolled her eyes. Were other Tadfielders encouraging her Hellmom’s love affair with the phone box or something?

“It’s all right, Ms. Cornell.” Disengaging from Heck, Crowley put his arms around the shoulders of a short, rotund woman. “It’s all right. Breathe. Just breathe, and tell me what’s wrong.”

Ms. Cornell, somewhere north of seventy-five, was a crinkle-skinned person with a short crew cut. The vibrant yellow of her hair matched her velour track suit with black stripes down the outside of the arms and legs. Her yellow bum bag was embroidered with bees buzzing around flowers, and she even resembled a (geriatric) bumblebee herself. “It’s — It’s — It’s the tenant!” she managed to say. “My tenant!”

“Is he named David?” Heck said under her breath. Still in _ Doctor Who _ mode, she was thinking of the actor who played Crowley’s favorite Doctor, the Tenth.

“Heck! Shush!” Crowley swatted her. “Okay,” he addressed Ms. Cornell, “deep breaths, in and out, in and out. That’s good; that’s good, just like that. So what’s with your tenant?”

“A call!” Speaking in fragments, Ms. Cornell brandished her mobile phone. The case was covered with bee-shaped cabochons with dotted lines coming out of their rears to indicate looping flight paths. “In pain — says she can’t move — all curled up — And here you are, Doctor, just when I need you! A miracle — simply a miracle. An angel — that’s what you are!” Calming down, Ms. Cornell beamed up at Crowley, patting his cheek. “An absolute angel!”

Though he was a former angel, Crowley vehemently rejected that status. Not even his ineffable spouse Aziraphale could use angelic words to refer to him. Crowley squirmed away from Ms. Cornell. “Well, yes, um, please stop clinging to me like that. I need to get my doctor’s bag — “ With a snap, Crowley summoned Nanny’s purse out of the ether. “ —And my glasses — “ With another snap, he changed his perennial black sunglasses into squarish spectacles of clear lenses.

“Your gl — “ Heck started to say as she saw her Hellmom abandon the usual protection that hid his reptilian eyes from general view. Then she realized that, from most angles, Crowley’s eyes appeared human — and, weirdly enough, brown — through the clear lenses. Only when he made direct eye contact did she see the familiar golden irises and vertical pupils. She also remembered that the Tenth Doctor wore similar blocky glasses on occasion. Ah, so he was dressing for the occasion. What a nerd! How far was this cosplay going to go?

“—And we’re ready for takeoff. Address, please, milady?” Crowley turned to Ms. Cornell.

“Uh, Willow Copse Road, number eight. It’s the — It’s the garden-level flat. But...your car — ?”

“This’ll do.” Crowley swung the phone box door open with a flourish of his long arm. “Sorry it’s a little cramped, but...eh.” He shrugged. “Budget cutbacks and all. Now it’s smaller on the _ inside.” _

“This isn’t a phone booth stuffing contest!” Heck yelled at him. She patted her pockets, but she had left her cell phone at home. “Don’t you have your phone?” She grabbed Crowley’s purse and riffled through it.

“I have mine, dear,” Ms. Cornell offered.

But Crowley wasn’t looking for a phone. He jerked on his purse strap, and Heck, still holding the bag, tumbled into the phone box with him. Corralling Ms. Cornell into the box and shutting the door, Crowley advised, “You might want to hold onto something.” Ms. Cornell clutched his arm. “Not me, milady. I have to drive.”

“Wh-where are we going?” Ms. Cornell asked Crowley, her voice quavering.

Crowley bounced his eyebrows. “House call!”

A vibrating wheeze rose in the air. Why was the phone box making TARDIS noises? Heck, her front smashed up against Crowley’s, put one hand flat against one side of the booth and the other hand flat against the other. Ms. Cornell transferred her grip to both the phone case and the (empty) phone book bracket sticking out below it. “Crowley! Is this thing gonna blow?” Heck cried. “ What are we doing?”

Crowley cocked his head, winked at her, and broke out into an asymmetrical smirk. “Taking off, of course! _ Allons-y!” _ There was a mischievous little tilt of his head, and the phone box shot into the sky.


	2. The Flying Phone Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley dials up the Doctor impersonation by flying a phone booth. Heck worries about the dangers of speeding through the sky in an airborne closet. And Ms. Cornell screams. A lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who else remembers the Vermicious Knids? Anyone? Anyone?

“Oh my gods — “ Heck’s intestines, deciding to stay earthbound, abandoned her as she, Crowley, and Ms. Cornell rocketed about sixty or so meters from the ground. The bucolic cottages and hedgerows of Tadfield whirled below them.

The phone box flew nearly as fast as Crowley drove his Bentley. Without the restraint of a seatbelt, however, Heck launched endlessly forward, flattening Crowley against the side of the booth. She was checked only by her shaking arms and his wonderfully solid, wonderfully still body.

“Oh my,” said Ms. Cornell. “This is — What a — Truly very — I don’t — I can’t — “ After a momentary silence, she remarked, in the same sort of tone you would use to say that you would like another cress sandwich, thank you very much, “I do believe that I shall start shrieking.” And she did.

Crowley apparently didn’t hear her. He only laughed with a bubbling, abandoned glee. “Brilliant! Positively brilliant!”

Suspended in a sideways fall without impact, Heck pressed her eyes shut. Blood whooshed in her ears, equaling the dense, heavy roar of passing air. (Fortunately, between the sound of her pulse and the ambient hubbub, she could barely hear Ms. Cornell.) At any moment, she knew, gravity would release them. The centrifugal force that tethered them invisibly to the planet would snap. The momentum of flight would lighten into the airy emptiness of panic, and they’d whirl out into space. 

Heck had grown up with Nanny and Francis reading her all sorts of chapter books, from _ Alice in Wonderland _ to modern children’s classics. Her frame of reference for this journey, therefore, wasn’t _ Doctor Who, _ but, rather, the worst book that Roald Dahl had written: _ Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. _ It was a sequel to _ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, _ with Charlie and his grandfather as passengers on the chocolatier Willy Wonka’s spacefaring elevator. It didn’t have the racist little Oompa-Loompas, which made it an improvement over the first book, but it was worse. The elevator spaceship triggered Heck’s fear of heights. 

How, Heck wondered, had Charlie and his grandfather managed to survive in a translucent capsule with the void of space pressing in all around them? How did they keep from bugging out completely and trying to open the door? 

Another horrible thought came to Heck. What about those black shriveled space worms that terrorized Charlie and co.? They bashed their heads against the elevator and tried to break it. What were they called? Vermicious somethings...

A modulating note, piercing and yet tuneful, broke through her terror. “Woooo-eeeeeee-oooooooh!” Either Crowley was making sound effects again, or he was singing, or he had a theremin somewhere in his apparently bottomless purse. Whatever the case, Heck worried that her Hellmom’s grip on sanity was loosening considerably.

Heck realized that she was airborne, defying gravity at the whim of a TV-addled demon. A frail, unpressurized box with paper-thin walls provided her only protection against flying danger. Abandoning the sides of the phone box, Heck wrapped her arms as tight as she could around Crowley and tried to forget about Vermicious Knids.

Crowley was still trilling in a slightly maniacal manner; his chest vibrated against hers. “Oh Mommy dearest,” said Heck between gritted teeth, trying to whisper so that Ms. Cornell wouldn’t freak out even more, “if you don’t stop with the theme music this instant, I am going to throw up all over Nanny’s purse, and you just know she’ll blame you.”

The theremin noises broke off instantly. “Aw, kid, no.” Crowley hugged her back, his voice soft and calm. “Close your eyes. Hang onto me, love. Hang onto me. We’re almost there.”

Heck concentrated on Crowley. He was stronger than the glass walls of the phone box. He was more fixed than the remains of the phone book still fraying in the bracket. She would not throw up. “I hate acrophobia,” she muttered into his chest. “I’m thinking that it’s gonna be like _ Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, _ and that’s not even real!”

“What what what? _ The Great Glass Elevator? _ Wrong story, kid. I’m the Doctor, you see,” Crowley said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level, “and Ms. Cornell and her not-David tenant are the unfortunates in need of my particular brand of heroic nonsense.” He planted a kiss on the crown of Heck’s head, right in the middle of her Pride-striped mohawk. “And, of course, that makes you — “ He trailed off, prompting.

He was obviously thinking of a specific character, but Heck didn’t have his encyclopedic familiarity with the Doctor and their many permutations. Okay, so it was probably someone from the era of the Tenth Doctor, Crowley’s favorite. (The guy who played Ten, David not-the-renting-kind-of-Tennant, bore a passing resemblance to Crowley, so Aziraphale and Heck always joked that he just liked watching himself.)

Heck thought of the latest episode of _ Doctor Who _ that she and Crowley had watched. (Crowley had tried to tempt Aziraphale into watching it with an offering from funderpants.com. They were briefs with a background of books and _ Wouldn’t you like to check this out? _ emblazoned on the center front. As much as Aziraphale appreciated books, novelty undergarments, and innuendo, he, deep in the midst of _ Hoisted By One’s Own Petard: Fart Jokes Throughout the Ages, _ declined. Heck, however, had easily fallen for the offer of a new terrarium for Ashtoreth, the corn snake that the Dowlings had gotten her for her twelfth birthday.) In the episode, the Doctor and Donna had met an artificially created soldier made from the Doctor’s genetic material without their consent. “I’m the Doctor’s daughter!” she exclaimed.

“Well, I was going to say that you were my companion,” replied Crowley with a chuckle, “but being my daughter is much better. Don’t you agree? Now you can be just as brilliant and nonsensical as me!”

“If you’re asking me to be a nurse, I’m not sure I can. I faint at the sight of my own blood — remember?”

“Then you can at least distract Ms. Cornell. Is she still screaming? Wow, she can really hold those high notes. Yikes. Anyway, if you can’t handle the tenant — hah hah! — then just entertain the landlady. Health care isn’t just about tending to the sick, you know. It’s about making sure the people around them are doing all right too.”

“Okay, I will.” Heck realized that her Hellmom had successfully prevented her from freaking out. “Thanks for distracting me. —Um, what exactly are you going to do here? You’re not a doctor...are you?”

“Of course I’m not a doctor. I’m _ the _Doctor!”

“That didn’t answer my question!”

“Coming in for a landing!” Crowley announced, cutting Heck off. “Brace yourselves, everyone! Bend at the knees, Ms. Cornell! The knees!” 

He shifted Heck to one arm and took firm hold of Ms. Cornell (still shrieking) with the other. Everyone assumed a weird sort of half squat, and the phone box touched down. It bounced once, then listed into a slow fall. Finally it landed on its side, stacking Heck and Ms. Cornell on top of Crowley.

Everything was still, so blessedly still. The ground wasn’t moving; Heck’s brain wasn’t sloshing. Even Ms. Cornell was quiet for the moment. For a few seconds, Heck enjoyed her reacquaintance with gravity. Then she opened her eyes, kicked the phone box door outward, and rolled off of Crowley, out into the wide world once more. 

Heck found herself in front of the stereotypically idyllic childhood home. The compact, rectangular wooden cottage had a red brick chimney climbing the left end wall. The building stood on a foundation of stone blocks that elevated it maybe a meter and a half from the ground. Yellow scalloped shingles overlapped on the steeply peaked roof. The shingles matched the shutters, decorated with daisies, that framed each four-pane window. With its neatness, symmetry, and brightness, the house may as well have been a kid’s drawing of _ My House _given reality. Either Ms. Cornell’s youth had been wonderful enough, Heck thought, that she wished to recreate it, or it had been horrible enough that she had tried to reinvent it.

A low gated picket fence marked the perimeter of the lawn where the phone box had crashed. Yellow brick paths wound around the yard among a miniature campsite and firepit (labeled _ Pixie Grotto) _ , an electric water feature in faux marble _ (Fairy Fountain), _ a half-size fake wooden well _ (Wishing Well), _ and a congregation of fat ceramic bearded guys _ (Gnomeville). _ Azalea and rhododendron bushes followed the fence line in exuberant bursts of gold and white. Two frothy white lilacs, one at either front corner of the house, pumped their sweet gooey scent into the air. Heck sneezed three times, then pulled her T-shirt up over her nose. Maybe she was having an allergic reaction to all the cuteness. 

“Good — Goodness!” stammered Ms. Cornell. She placed one foot on the grass, paused a moment, then set the other down. She steadied herself with one hand on the sideways phone box, even when she was fully upright. “Well, that was a — That was a — “ Nouns failed her. “That was a thing. That was a thing that happened. Almost like — like — like being in a TARDIS.” She finally felt confident enough to let go of the phone box. “Well,” she said under her breath, “assuming that the TARDIS was red and very, very, _ very _ poorly piloted. Hmph.” 

Crowley hadn’t landed well. The feet of several unfortunate Gnomeville citizens stuck out from under the phone box. If Crowley had been flying Dorothy’s house into Oz, he wouldn’t just have landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, but the majority of the Munchkins too. “Oh my gods,” Heck grumbled to him. “Who taught _ you _to drive?”

Unfolding himself from the phone box with a curvaceous slide, Crowley hooked <strike>Nanny’s purse</strike> his doctor’s bag in the crook of his elbow. “Joke’s on you,” he said, giving the tip of Heck’s nose an affectionate tap, “because I never learned to drive!”

“That explains so much,” Heck remarked.

“I believe — “ said Ms. Cornell faintly. “I believe — “ Then, more strongly: “I believe I shall start screaming again very soon.”

  
Crowley raised his eyebrow, giving Heck a look that spoke volumes. (Volume I was _ Do What You Have to Do, Kid. _ Volume II was _ A Cup of Tea, a Game of Bridge, a Ball Gag — I Don’t Care. _ The third and final volume was _ Just Keep That Siren From Going Off Again.) _ As Heck took Ms. Cornell by the elbow and promised her a nice comfy chair, Crowley called out like a battle cry, “To the tenant!”


	3. The Not-David Tenant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heck meets the patient and eventually recognizes her as an old childhood friend! The two catch up. Crowley demonstrates the amazing properties of his doctor's bag. Mary Poppins is invoked.

“Doctor’s daughter to the OR, stat!” Crowley called from the garden-level flat several minutes later. “Oh. Wait. This isn’t the OR, is it? Anyway, come meet the not-David tenant!”

Meanwhile, upstairs, Heck sat Ms. Cornell in her recliner with a fuzzy blanket over her knees and a glass of water at her side. The room’s decorating scheme could be summarized in a single word: doilies. The ornamental lace-edged mats lay on the backs of the matching overstuffed sofa and armchairs, perched exactly in the center of the round walnut side tables, draped on the top of the TV set, and hung on the walls in shadow box frames. Larger, thicker ones served as rugs on the hardwood floor. Posters of angels with alarmingly teardrop-shaped eyes exhorted Heck to _ Have faith! _ and _ Pray every day. _

A powdery floral scent — air freshener? — tickled Heck’s nose. “Do you mind if I head downstairs?” she said to Ms. Cornell. She liked Ms. Cornell okay (even with her high-volume distress calls), but she really wanted to escape from the doily invasion.

“I’m fine, dear.” Ms. Cornell’s voice wore thin from all her earlier screaming. She ran her hand through her crew cut, which, affixed upright with hairspray, refused to move. “Be a good companion now. Run along and help the Doctor. And I’ll just — I’ll just have a nice bit of a lie-down here. And if I feel an attack of the screams coming on again, I’ll — well — I suppose I shall call 999.”

“Helllllllspaaaaaaawn!” Crowley yodeled.

_ “Doctor?” _ said a heavily incredulous voice that Heck almost recognized. “How about _ weirdo? _ Calling your nurse _ hellspawn! _ Who does that?”

“The kind of doctor that’s Hellmom to a hellspawn, of course.”

“Okay, bye, Ms. Cornell!” Fleeing the doily disaster, Heck ducked down a central flight of stairs and entered the garden-level flat. It was really a finished basement; vertical paneling covered the lower two thirds of the walls, stone the rest. An open-plan kitchen/living/dining room took up most of the space. “Mom, where are you?”

“Bedroom. Down the hall, second right.”

Following her Hellmom’s voice, Heck passed through the main room. With all the windows embedded up by the flat’s ceiling, the place was darker than the aboveground floor and slightly but distinctly cooler. It smelled very, very faintly of old earth and reminded Heck not a little bit of a grave. 

Bleached skulls — mostly small predators, some horned cows or goats, even something large with fangs — lined the mantelpiece, the dining table, and the top of the kitchen cabinets. Thorny garlands, punctuated with crunchy dead roses, wound around the skulls. It looked like someone had forgotten to take down their Halloween decorations, but in a cool way that made everything about the flat seem slightly more ominous. Maybe she was in a grave after all, Heck thought with a shiver, quite liking the sensation. Better than drowning in doilies.

Going down a short, stooping hallway, Heck entered the bedroom. Little more than a glorified cubby, it held only a twin bed and a scarred unfinished desk with a bookcase rising up the back. A paperback entitled _ How to Clean Roadkill _ lay spread-eagle on the desk blotter. The pencil smudges and scribbles on the blotter paper transformed into a sharp-edged thicket of shadowy trees with leering goblin faces among the branches. On the bookcase, a tintype of a kid in a coffin acted as a bookend for well-thumbed colored Fairy Books by Andrew Lang. The smell of far-gone roses lingered in the air, faded and sweet, and Heck liked it.

On the bed was a young woman about Heck’s age that Heck thought she knew, though she couldn’t place her exactly. She sat against pillows among the night-blue bedclothes with the bleak, pallid wiltedness of someone who has been throwing up too often. Hers wasn’t the high-energy taut slimness that Crowley possessed, but the defensive delicacy that followed a childhood without enough hugs. She had an oval face and deep green eyes with shadows staining the sockets beneath. Her thick black hair flopped in a half done ponytail at the crown of her head. She wore pajamas, including a black T-shirt that said, _ And am I born to die / To lay this body down? / And will my trembling spirit fly / Into a world unknown? _ She watched Heck with a bird-like curiosity combined with weariness. Where did Heck know her from?

“Okay, introductions!” Crowley, clapping his hands once, began. He was sitting backwards in the desk chair, arms crossed on the back. “This lovely young lady — “

“Wait.” The person on the bed held up two long pointy index fingers. Her voice was rough, but not deep or low, just scratchy, prickly. “_ Person. _NB here, okay?”

“My mistake!” Crowley’s eyes rounded. He hated calling people by the wrong labels or names. “I’m sorry — really I am. What’s _ NB? Notably brilliant?” _ He tried to cover his slip of the tongue with a joke.

“Nonbinary,” said the person with a faint smile. “Feminine pronouns are cool, but no _ way _am I a lady!” Her tone deepened with emphasis, and the scratchiness increased.

“I’m really sorry,” repeated Crowley. “I’m sorry. I just assumed — and that really was rather silly of me, wasn’t it? _ Person, _ feminine pronouns. Got it.” He nodded smartly. “As for me… Well...what I am varies, as do the pronouns. For now, you can call me Doctor or Crowley — only she,” he explained, nodding to Heck, “gets to call me Hellmom. I don’t really care about pronouns, as long as they’re not _ it _ and _ its. _And, if anything changes, I’ll definitely let you know.”

_ “Weirdo?” _ said the person with a crackling laugh. She waggled a black and wing-shaped eyebrow. “Can I call you _ weirdo?” _

“That’s _ Dr. Weirdo _ to you, young person!” Crowley shook his finger at her. “Where was I? Oh yeah. So here,” he started again, pointing to the aforementioned lovely young person, “we have Dean Tyler, lately of Oxford, now currently back in her hometown of Upper Tadfield and hoping to — what was it?”

“Um, what?” said Dean.

“C’mon; c’mon; c’mon — what were you were telling me about your greatest goal in life?” Crowley snapped his fingers, trying to remember. “Oh right — _ to make everyone’s day more macabre.” _

“Fuck — didn’t think you’d _ announce _it…” Dean slouched down among her pillows, embarrassed.

At that moment, Heck knew who Crowley was talking to. This was her childhood friend, who had been going by Deenie when Heck knew her about a decade ago. Named Ronaldine after her father, the unofficial town busybody R.P. Tyler, she had absorbed much of his ill-tempered criticism. When she and Heck met, Dean believed that she was sad, mad, and most of all, irredeemably bad, especially because her somber demeanor and morbid style didn’t agree with her dad’s pastoral concept of Tadfield. Heck’s friendship, as well as lessons in Gothitude from Nanny Ashtoreth, gave Dean some of the love and confidence she so desperately craved. But Heck had lost track of Dean at the age of ten when the Dowlings banished her to boarding school in upstate New York. But here she was again!

“Deenie!” Heck squealed and almost jumped on Dean, then decided she probably shouldn’t drop her entire weight onto a sick person. “I mean — Sorry.”

Dean twitched her head, dismissing Heck’s mistake. “‘S okay. Just started going by Dean recently.”

“Deeeeeeean!” Heck tried again, trilling her old friend’s name with excitement. “Oh my gods, oh my gods! I knew you looked familiar!”

Dean cocked her head at Heck. “Okay, who are you — Weirdo Junior? ‘Cause Dr. Weirdo here says you’re his kid, but — “

“And this extraordinary hellspawn,” Crowley interrupted, with all the overbearing enthusiasm of a ringmaster, “is none other than — drum roll, please — Hecate Frances Ashtoreth Dowling!”

“Otherwise known as Heck,” Heck added when Dean’s face remained blank. “Heck Dowling. I’m Heck Dowling. From Manure Manor, Cow Plop Lane, number twelve, Upper Tadfield — remember?” (That was what her Dowling mom had called the place. Harriet Dowling, a New York City person through and through, distrusted water outside of bottles and dirt outside of vacuum cleaners. The Dowlings’ Tadfield residence sat on a road — Pasture Drive — named for what it was generations ago, but even this oblique agricultural reference was too much for Harriet Dowling. She unloaded onto the cottage all her frustration with her husband’s assignment, Tadfield’s rural isolation, and her own boredom. And that was how Heck spent the first eleven years of her life in a place called Manure Manor.) 

“Heck? Heck!” Dean’s face gleamed with a smile, her green eyes seeming to enlarge. “The ant farm? The snake nest under the bed? Nanny and Francis?” 

“Yeah, that’s me — the witch formerly known as Warlock! I’m a girl, by the way, so feminine pronouns, please.”

“Fuck, Heck…” Her voice catching in her throat, Dean gazed at her. “Fuck! Just...fuck.” 

“Uh,” replied Heck. She realized that Nanny’s little Goth protegee was still as blunt and sarcastic and gloomy as ever. But now she was no longer little, and, even though she was run-down, that rough and ready energy glimmering in her big eyes and pale face made her incredibly hot.

At Dean’s third _ fuck, _ a wry expression flitted across Crowley’s pointy face. Heck’s Hellmom was obviously contemplating a remark like the following: “If that’s what you’re after, don’t let me stop you. All I ask is that you just wait till I finish my consult.” Fortunately, he exercised the small amount of restraint he had and didn’t say it. Heck untensed and thanked the gods. Then she scratched that and just thanked Crowley.

“That’s awesome.” Dean eventually achieved the presence of mind to vary her vocabulary. “Never knew Heck stood for anything longer.”

“Well, it didn’t till about four or five years ago. That’s when I got into witchcraft — the neopagan, Wiccan kind of witchcraft — and learned about Hecate,” Heck explained. “She’s a goddess associated with magic and transformation and crossroads and thresholds, so she’s like literally a goddess of transition.”

“The perfect name! Congrats! You found the perfect name. I’d hug you, but I think I’d hurt myself.”

“Awwww, gee, thanks. Yeah...so...Dean, huh? It must be a relief to get out from your dad’s name, I bet. I know you were having some, uh, trouble in Oxford — “ Heck said uncertainly. Crowley had mentioned to her that Dean had run away from home, finding shelter at an Oxford home for teens.

“Yeah.” Dean grimaced at the memories. “Homeless. Got a place here now, though,” she continued, perking up, “sort of a homeshare, with Ms. Cornell. Can’t really personalize it, but all it costs is some housework, grocery shopping, the occasional TV show. _ Doctor Who _ fiend.” Dean rolled her eyes affectionately. “Anyway, yeah — my own name, my own place, and — hopefully, someday — my own clue about what the fuck I want to do with my life.” 

“Let me know if and how you ever figure that out,” said Heck. “I’m still working on that one.”

“Me three!” piped up Crowley. He shook his head. “Even after six thousand years… Well!” Sitting up straight, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Let’s get going with this appointment then, shall we?”

“Oooh, I should take notes!” Heck said. She addressed Crowley: “Got my phone? Or, better yet, a laptop?”

Crowley jammed his hand into his bag, which was about as long and as wide as a sheet of A4 copier paper, though much thicker — perhaps twenty centimeters or so. He pulled out a laptop. Besides being on, to the Internet, and open to a blank word processing document, the laptop also measured much larger than the dimensions of the bag. “Will this do?” He balanced it on his palm like a waiter holding a tray.

“The _fuck?”_ said Dean, screwing up her face. Her eyes darted between the laptop and the bag in which it obviously couldn’t fit.

“Yeah, thanks.” Heck nodded to her Hellmom. “That’s great, but...you’ve got the only chair. And if I sit at the desk, then I’m not even facing you two, so — “

“So you need a place to work.” Reaching again into the bag, Crowley pulled out one of those plastic chairs with attached laminate desks that Heck had used in high school. It was even built for a left hander. As Heck slid into her new seat and adjusted the angle of the laptop screen to her comfort, Crowley asked, “Anything else? Task lighting?” He hauled out a floor lamp that was already illuminated and placed it next to Heck’s desk. “Cup of tea?” He withdrew a filigreed china teacup, full and steaming, on a matching saucer. He took a dainty sip, little finger out straight. “Oooh! Too hot!” 

Heck snorted, shaking her head. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, you goof. Worry about your patient.”

“Oh! Yes! Of course!” Crowley whipped around to Dean again. “Sorry about that,” he said, pouring the hot tea straight into the bag. He dropped in the empty cup, followed by the saucer.

Dean snatched up the bag, then reached into it cautiously. “Fuck! Not even wet!” She overturned it, shaking it violently. No furniture, no computers, no tea things — nothing fell out except for a metal sign that you might see hanging in a shop window. _ So sorry we’re closed, _ read the sign, as it hit the floor with a flat clang. _ Please come back later. _ “Mary fuckin’ Poppins!” Dean cried at Crowley, almost like a challenge. She obviously had in mind that character’s carpet bag from which she drew more things than could ever be stored in it. “You some secret flying nanny or something?”

Heck suppressed a laugh. “And then some!”


	4. Doctor Who?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean tells Crowley her symptoms [finally!]. Crowley, who doesn't know where lungs are, inspires Dean with no confidence whatsoever, especially when he starts talking about curing stage IV cancer with breath mints. Heck tries to draw on her knowledge of children's books to help her. But there's only one person that Dean trusts to help her, and it's...guess who?

“So,” said Crowley to Dean, “Ms. Cornell informs me that you are a truly sick individual. Tell me more!” 

With that, the exam finally began. Dean detailed her symptoms. The pain in her belly had started a few days ago on the right side. She pointed to a place in the middle of her right abdomen, halfway between her belly button and the crest of her hip. Eventually it went right behind her navel, but now it was on her far right side. It had been intermittent until last night, when it became a background spike in her awareness. She’d been running a fever and feeling nauseated too. She ate okay until this morning, when even drinking hurt too much. The pain had increased — constant jabbing pokes that turned electrifying and unbearable with sudden movement. She was fine unless she moved quickly, and she hadn’t called a professional because she hated hospitals.

Clattering away on her keyboard, Heck took notes. She supposed that she was providing invaluable assistance by summarizing Dean’s case in an easily accessible list of symptoms. But couldn’t she be doing something else? The Doctor’s companions never just sat by on the TV show. They always brought something unexpectedly useful to their travels with the Doctor, whether it was their special skills or even just their very human sense of compassion and wonder. What would she do if she really were the Doctor’s companion...or even the Doctor’s daughter? Heck had no clue.

Neither did Dr. Weirdo apparently. “Okay, so abdominal pain obviously means that the problem’s, uh, in your abdomen,” said Crowley, pushing his clear glasses up on his narrow nose. “But there’s a lot of things in there, like intestines and esophaguses — esophagi? — and lungs, so — “

“Pssst!” Heck elbowed Crowley. “Lungs are up here, under the ribcage.” She gestured in circles around her upper chest. “Behind your breasts, around your heart.”

“Hm.” Crowley popped his eyebrows. “Good to know. Anyway,” he said to Dean, “the good news is — it’s not your lungs.”

“Could’a’ told you that myself,” Dean scoffed. “Heck, throw my my mobile? It’s on my desk. I’m calling 999.”

“No! Wait! Five more minutes!” Crowley held up a hand. “My, uh, ineffable medicine only works if I know the precise source of your problem. You wouldn’t want me in your intestines, just curing everything left and right, would you? Do you mind if I poke — oh, uh, I think the technical term is  _ palpate  _ — and you give a yell when it hurts?”

“You’ve got five minutes.” With a look of distrust so heavy that it sent her eyelids down halfway, Dean reclined slowly on her bed.

Heck turned her mind to various fictional doctors whose stories Nanny and Francis had read aloud to her. Which of them might help? Dr. Doolittle was a misanthropic veterinarian, so he was right out. Dr. Frankenstein might be useful if Dean were dead, which she wasn’t. As for Dr. Faustus, he was useless too. First of all, as a Wiccan, Heck thought she had less of a soul and more of a temporary accretion of divinely animated, embodied matter. Second of all, she really didn’t need to bargain with the Devil, since she already had her Hellmom as her own personal — and very powerful — demon. So much for that line of thought.

Then Heck remembered the Little Doc Wellington books. They were a children’s mystery series:  _ Little Doc Wellington and the Forty Winks, Little Doc Wellington and the Fountain of Youth, Little Doc Wellington and the Poisoned Apple, _ etc., etc., etc. They grew out of stories that C.Q. Stamps, MD, a general practitioner in the 1950s, told his children. According to his preface, Stamps intended the series to “impart basic medical knowledge to young readers so that they might properly look after their health and even save a life.”

Every book featured Dr. “Little Doc” Marcus Wellington, general physician for the English town of Hale-upon-Hearty. The doctor and his two nurses confronted everyday injuries, as well as stranger medical condundrums that spanned the entire book. The nurses’ extensive first aid training and improvisational treatments saved the day along the way. But it was always Little Doc Wellington who solved the major mystery, explaining everything to awestruck townspeople in long-winded monologues at the end.

Wasn’t there a case like Dean’s in one of these books? Heck wracked her brains. “What would Little Doc Wellington do?” she muttered.

“Doctor who?” said Crowley, who then started humming the theme song under his breath. “How’s this?” He tapped the lower right edge of Dean’s abdomen.

“Fuck!” bellowed Dean. “Told you it hurt there already. Stop poking!” She batted Crowley’s hand away. To Heck, she said, “Hey, wait a minute...Little Doc Wellington? All those old-fashioned medical mysteries for kids? Read the whole series! You too?”

“Yeah.” Heck tilted her head to the side and made a face at the ceiling. “Yeah, Nanny and Francis read them all to me too. I swear there was something like this in one of the books — unexplained abdominal pain. I can’t remember what, though.”

“Well, we know what Little Dick Wellington would do in this case,” muttered Dean. “He’d let the nurses actually take care of things, and he’d just fuck off and do big, important research. Then he’d come back later, and we’d get a six-page lecture in medical jargon, and he’d take all the credit. Cocky bastard,” she muttered, folding her arms. “Always wanted him to be wrong. Then, for once, all his patients would die. Then he’d get some mystery disease and pop his clogs too.  _ Little Doc Wellington and the Forty Corpses!”  _ She spread out her hands as if seeing the title on a marquee. “That would be a  _ real  _ happy ending.”

“You have a depraved mind, kid,” Crowley interjected, “and I  _ like  _ it.” 

“I know!” Heck snapped her fingers. “Those two nurses — the ones who were always like,  _ Yes, Dr. Wellington; I quite agree, Dr. Wellington _ — would take over. We all know that they had way more bedside manner than he did anyway. What were their names?”

“Mercy Tender and Charity Sweet,” Dean said in a prim, simpery voice that told you exactly how little she thought of their saccharine characterization.

“Yeah, so they take over the late doctor’s practice,” Heck elaborated. “The one that’s always into shots does a free flu shot clinic every year. And the one that’s always cleaning things tells people how to wash your hands properly, how to keep colds from spreading, that sort of thing.” While she was talking about Little Doc Wellington, some related grain of memory sifted back into place. “So, Dean — the pain went up to your navel and then sort of around, almost on your side?” When Dean nodded, Heck said, “That was in one of the books; I know it was. There was a diagram just like that of how the pain moved. Ugh, I don’t remember what disease it was, though.”

“Yeah, yeah! I remember.” Dean creased up her forehead, pondering.  _ “Little Doc Wellington and the Pain in the Neck. _ Can see it, right there on the lower left page. Fuck — what was the disease?”

“Silly me — I’ve got the Internet right here!” Heck slapped her laptop. “And a list of your symptoms too. If I cross-reference all the diseases in  _ Pain in the Neck _ with your symptoms, we might be getting somewhere.”

Crowley stroked his chin, peering over Heck’s shoulder. “The Internet. I keep forgetting that exists. My brilliant hellspawn!” He clapped Heck on the bicep.

“Don’t know shit about anatomy,” observed Dean, folding her arms, “or even about the Internet. How do you keep from killing people, Dr. Weirdo? Sandrine Gilhooley says you cured her stage four ovarian cancer with breath mints. Stage four! Fuckin’ breath mints!”

“Ohhhhh yeah!” said Crowley in a casual drawl as if he did this all the time. (Heck was starting to think that maybe he did.) “I told her to take two and call me in a week. She did and said that her cancer was gone. And let’s see — Portia Schmidt got rid of her gout by burning her Golliwog collection and swearing not to collect any more. Lester Fein was healed of his bunions by shoveling horse dung for a week. Of course, then his clothes stank for a month after, but it serves him right. He keeps insulting my garden. Couldn’t do anything for Lily Papaseraphim’s autism, though, because — surprise surprise! — it’s not a disease. I did give her dad a chill pill, though — or maybe it was a chocolate chip — and overnight he started using words like  _ diversity of brainstyles _ and  _ neuroatypical. _ In other words, the methods of ineffable medicine depend on the patient,” Crowley summarized. “Also on how much I like them.”

Dean carefully scooted to the far side of her twin bed, away from Crowley. “Don’t trust you and your breath mints. You’re not doing anything to me.”

“Who do you trust then? My kid? You want Heck to heal you?”

Heck jerked her head up from her laptop. On a Little Doc Wellington fan wiki, she found a list of ailments treated in  _ Little Doc Wellington and the Pain in the Neck.  _ Unfortunately, four of them — gallstones, kidney stones, appendicitis, and intestinal torsion — featured abdominal pain. She was now searching for information on each condition, which she then compared to her list of Dean’s symptoms. “Mom! I don’t do miracle cures! I’m a witch, not an angel or a demon or whatever!”

“Humans have been known to commit miracles,” said Crowley nonchalantly. “I’d just be the power source.”

“Magic? Now I  _ really  _ don’t trust you.” Dean curled her upper lip. “Maybe  _ some  _ people have magic, but not you. You just have like a bottomless Mary Poppins carpet bag or some shit.”

“So, kid, is there anyone you  _ do  _ trust around here?” Crowley persisted. “Ms. Cornell?”

“Hah! Yeah, she’s okay for a landlady, but she’s no doctor. Only one person — “

“Who?”

“She’s not here. Can’t come. I don’t want — Just forget it.”

“I won’t. This is your health at stake. Tell me who.” Crowley’s face set into a serious cast.

“You’re gonna yell at me.” Dean cringed.

Crowley shook his head. “Just because your dad and so many other people yelled at you in the past doesn’t mean I will do. I won’t. I promise I won’t yell at you.” He pitched his voice low.

“Dean, please,” said Heck quietly. “We’re trying to help, and we  _ can  _ help you. We just need you to help us too.”

As she looked at Heck, Dean’s eyebrows tilted up. The appeal from her childhood friend worked. “Okay. Whatever. It’s — “ She mumbled something.

“Who’d she say?” Crowley asked Heck.

“Nanny!” Dean burst out in something close to a sob. “Nanny Ashtoreth! You know — That Other Woman. Fuck — I’m so sorry, Crowley. Fuck fuck fuck. I know she’s fucking up your marriage, but she...she saved my life once,” she admitted, her voice dwindling as small as a child’s. “Only adult I ever trusted. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She hid her face in her hands. “Yell at me now. Just yell at me now, and get it over with.”


	5. The Secret Flying Nanny Saves the Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nanny's here to make everything better! Weird little hats are extolled. A dramatic appendectomy is performed. Little Doc Wellington's miserable end is imagined. All and sundry rejoice [well, except for Little Doc Wellington].

Crowley leaned forward. He brushed Dean’s cheek with his fingertips. “Child?” he said, and that word, instead of the usual  _ kid, _ let Heck know exactly what was coming. “Please stop apologizing. There’s really no need. I’m not angry with you, not at all. I want you to look at me. No, don’t turn away. Please just look at me.” He nudged Dean’s chin with his knuckles, and she reluctantly raised her head and met his eyes. “Yes, good. Are you ready?”

As soon as Dean was paying attention, Crowley (who had mostly conscious control over these things) became Nanny. Her body shape differed from his, though not appreciably. What distinguished her from Crowley was her bearing. She lifted her head upon her spine and rolled back her shoulders. She sighed with contentment as she moved herself into her usual indefatigably efficacious posture. She crossed her arms at her chest and closed her legs, a movement that seemed to draw Crowley’s sprawled-out, extended power back into Nanny’s core.

Expressions bounced heedlessly across Crowley’s face, but they glided across Nanny’s. Now she swiveled her head slowly to Dean as a wide welcoming smile turned all the straight lines of her angular face into curves. “Hello, Dean. I heard you were asking for me?”

“Nanny?” said Dean. Then her voice lowered in suspicion. “But your eyes…”

“Oh...yes. These.” Touching the clear spectacles on her nose, Nanny turned them into a customary set of round black shades. Her true eye color was now no longer masked. She lowered her chin and winked a golden eye at Dean. “You approve?”

“Fuck…” breathed Dean, dropping back amongst her pillows.

Nanny winced. “Please excuse me. These clothes are tight in all the wrong ways.” Her broadened shoulders strained Crowley’s silk shirt. The band of his jeans bagged around her slightly narrower waist, even as her wider hips pushed the denim to the limit of its seams. She thought for a moment. “I should probably continue this ridiculous medical charade,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “but I’m sure I can do so more fashionably.” She magicked herself better fitting clothes.

Heck unbent her head from the laptop and cracked her neck. Her online research had just ruled out intestinal torsion. She hoped that the diagram she barely recalled would show up when she investigated one of the three remaining conditions. “I thought you were the Doctor.” Focusing on her Hellmom, she made a face at her new clothes.

Nanny now wore a classic sort of 1930s nurse’s garb. Her wavy red hair, pulled up and back into a smooth twist, was surmounted by a weird little hat that resembled a paper boat. A corona of excessively large pins, radiating from her crown, kept the hat in place. Her severely tailored long-sleeve dress cinched at the waist with a built-in belt. Everything was, of course, black, including the gloves of thin black leather, the stockings, and the pumps. She was smiling like she’d just held a runway show in her head and awarded herself grand prize.

“I still am the Doctor, just dressed as a nurse,” Nanny said as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.

“Why?” Dean said.

“Because classic nurses’ uniforms have fancy hats, and fancy hats are cool.”

“The fuck?”

“Really now, child! Is there any cause for that language?” Nanny pursed her lips.

“Ah hah!” Dean laughed, then clutched her side. “Ow! Damn! But — “ She relaxed, staring at Nanny. “It  _ is _ you. You  _ are  _ a secret flying nanny — or like  _ the _ secret flying Nanny — the one who gave me Goth lessons!”

“—Which evidently took,” remarked Nanny, plucking the tintype of the dead kid from the bookcase and admiring it. “How marvelous!”

“And you’re Crowley too. So…” Dean scrunched her face in puzzlement. “Shapeshifter then?”

“Obviously.”

“This your true form? Or him?”

“Both. I’m genderfluid. I have several different forms, each of which have different genders and, as you can see, slightly different personalities.”

Meanwhile, on the Internet, Heck clicked on a link. Opening a page on appendicitis, she found the diagram she’d been thinking of. “Ah hah! I think I’ve got something,” she announced. She scanned the article, then looked at her notes about Dean. Everything checked out. “Nanny, I think it’s appendicitis.”

“Appendi-what now?” Despite having lived among humans for over six thousand years, the demon knew appallingly little about human anatomy.

“Appendicitis.” Heck folded down the screen of her laptop halfway so she could see Dean. “That Little Doc Wellington diagram was for appendicitis,” she explained to Dean. “I found the same one online, and, of all the possibilities in  _ The Pain in the Neck, _ appendicitis seems closest. There’s the way the pain moved, the fever, the puking, the not being able to eat. Apparently that’s a really strong indicator for appendicitis, as opposed to like intestinal torsion or kidney stones.” To her Hellmom, Heck said, “Nanny, you should check her large intestine.” 

Nanny nodded. “Right — and where’s that?” In the background, Dean rolled her eyes prodigiously.

Heck opened a new tab in her browser, illustrating a simplified lower digestive system. The appendix stuck out from the bottom of the main vertical piece of the large intestine on the right side. In contrast to the neutral, pale pink large intestine, the inflamed appendix was colored red, with wiggly lines around it to suggest pain. “Right there.” She turned the laptop toward Nanny, then also pointed to the same place on her own body.

“Well, that looks revolting,” said Nanny, making faces at the anatomical diagram. To Dean, she said, “Don’t worry. This is completely non-invasive. I just need to know the cause of your pain before I can cure it.” To Heck, Nanny said, “And the treatment?”

“Take it out,” said Heck, “before it bursts and infects your entire abdominal cavity.” 

“Well, then I think I should do what my hellspawn says, don’t you?” said Nanny to Dean. “Take my hand.” 

Dean made fists and jammed her hands into her pockets. “What are you going to do? Can’t give me a chill pill. I can’t eat!”

Nanny said gently, “I’m going to save your life, child, just as I did once before. Isn’t that why you asked me here?”

“Yeah…” Dean’s frame lost some of its rigid defensiveness.

“So let me do what I’ve come here to do.” Nanny extended her right hand, palm up, toward Dean. “Trust me.”

And Dean did. Heck could see it in the way that her face smoothed out and her head cocked. Dean smiled at Nanny as if she knew that Nanny could do anything. “Okay,” she whispered. “I do.”

Curling her right fingers around Dean’s, Nanny made a performance of her cure. Heck knew that her Hellmom’s demonic powers worked with a simple snap, but the demon in any form also seized all possible chances to mug for an audience. Closing her eyes, Nanny kept up a running commentary as if she were watching through the lens of a microscopic camera: “All right, moving through the epidermis. Approaching your large intestine. So where did we say that appendix was? 

“Oh! Oh my!” Nanny’s entire face crumpled in disgust. “Why, yes, that  _ does _ look infected. How unfortunate — all red and swollen. I think it would be best if we just discreetly...disposed of...this filth.” She pinched her left fingers together as if plucking up a piece of invisible trash. “Let’s just incinerate this in the sun, now, shall we?” With a repressed shudder, she flicked the invisible appendix into outer space. She dusted off her gloved hands with a few smart smacks. She snapped her fingers, then opened her eyes and trained her attention on Dean. “There now. How do you feel?”

“Fuck, I…” Dean went completely still, then lurched up from her pillows. “I’m — fuck! Fuck a duck out of luck on a puck!”

“Why, I do believe that sentence contained absolutely no useful information whatsoever.” Nanny chuckled, ramming a few straight pins more deeply into her nurse’s cap and updo.

Dean patted around on her stomach. “I — Why — I’m fine! No shooting pain. No tenderness.” She jabbed more viciously at her belly. “Nothing. Nothing at all! Oh my God! Oh my God! Nanny! I think you got it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She flung her arms around Nanny.

Nanny hugged her with one arm. “You’re welcome, child, but you really should be thanking the Doctor’s daughter as well.” She ruffled Heck’s spiky hair affectionately. “After all, she’s the one who knows what an appendix is.”

“Yeah. Fuck, Heck.” Dean gave her a solemn nod. “Thanks. Good call there. Always knew you were cool.” Her scratchy voice softened as she gave Heck an admiring look with those deep emerald eyes. Her smile came and stayed as she kept looking at Heck.

Did Dean think Heck was hot too? Oh gods! Quick! Deploy deflecting humor! “Uhhh,” said Heck. “You’re welcome. Thank the Internets too — and whoever did that Little Doc Wellington wiki.”

“Don’t forget Little Doc Wellington himself!” added Nanny brightly.

“Oh, fuck him,” Dean groaned, finally looking away from Heck (phew!). “Know what? Changed my mind. Mercy Tender and Charity Sweet don’t just wait for him to die. They straight-up murder his ass.”

“This story has certainly taken a turn for the better!” Nanny, elbow on knee, chin in hand, leaned toward Dean. “Go on. I assume it’s because he called them  _ girls  _ once too often?”

“Well, yeah.” Dean shrugged. “Justifiable homicide right there.”

“I know! I know!” piped up Heck. “One of them was always cleaning everything. Who was that?”

“Mercy Tender,” supplied Nanny.

“So, one day, the doc has left, and the nurses survey the mess in the OR,” said Heck. “They start talking about dissatisfied patients who think he’s too arrogant. Then Mercy Tender puts on gloves, picks up her bottle of nasty, corrosive, industrial-strength chemicals, and gets an evil glint in her eye.  _ You know, _ she says to Charity Sweet,  _ I think it’s time for Little Doc Wellington to clean up his act. _ ”

“Oh! Yes! Perfect!” cried Dean. “And Charity Sweet is the one with the syringe fetish, right?”

“Hmmmm, she  _ was  _ rather unhealthily obsessed with stabbing things,” murmured Nanny to no one in particular.

“So Charity Sweet says she’s going to give him a flu shot, but it’s really Mercy Tender’s caustic lye or something,” Dean went on. “And it dissolves all his organs, and he dies in agony. And Mercy and Charity forge a will that leaves his practice to them.”

Nanny rubbed her hands together and made her own contribution: “They burn his corpse in a bonfire on the town green, and the entire population of Hale-upon-Hearty comes out to watch. They dance and sing because no one liked him, even if he did know what he was doing. Every year after, on the day of his murder, there’s a celebration with bonfires and free flu shots.”

“He becomes a scary story after his death,” Dean added, “like a boogeyman. If you’re bad, he’ll steal you away and drag you down through his bonfire to the depths of Hell, and there you’ll have to stay, in the dark and the cold, with the stench of the forty rotting corpses.” She sniffled away mock tears. “I just love happy endings.”

“You two children are appallingly vengeful, sadistic, and bloodthirsty,” Nanny said.“My little hellspawn!” One hand to her chest, she gazed at Heck with misty eyes. “And my little Gothling!” She addressed Dean. “Well, you’re not so little anymore. All grown up! I’m so...so...so...proud!”


	6. The Master of Ineffable Medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley comes back. [What's with the hat, Crowley?] He, Heck, and Dean make plans to get together. Heck learns the story behind Crowley's pretensions to medical practice. Despite his cures having no evil side effects whatsoever, he strenuously insists that he's not good. Heck finds out why...

Dean snorted. “Uh, Nanny?”

“Yes, my darling sadist?”

“Do you really not know what an appendix is? How come?”

“I’m not human.” Nanny smiled serenely.

“Right, so you’re an inhuman, genderfluid, shapeshifting...uh...being,” said Dean, ticking traits off on her fingers, “who flies around in a phone box, has that weird bag that’s bigger on the inside or something, calls himself...herself...themself Doctor, and cures appendicitis with technology that’s so sufficiently advanced that you might as well call it magic.” 

“Yes.”

“So are you just cosplaying a Time Lord? Or are you actually being one?”

“Excuse me, child, but do I look like a  _ lord  _ of anything to you? I am a lady through and through!”

“Time Lady?” Dean ran through a list of alternatives: “Time Ruler? Time Being? Time Individual?”

“Well!” Nanny rose briskly. “Time flies when you’re having fun, and so must I. Goodbye, child. I’m sure I speak for both myself and my hellspawn when I say that I truly enjoyed our unexpected visit. Not the appendicitis, of course, but your company was delightful. And I know that I speak for my entire family, including Aziraphale, when I say that you are welcome at our house anytime. You know where to find us.” 

“Doctor? Hecate? Dean dear?” called Ms. Cornell. “How are you doing down there? I’ve made you a nice pot of tea.”

“Hmmm, I believe that’s Ms. Cornell nearing your door. And that’s my cue!”

Nanny (and her clothes) changed, drawing in on herself, turning, then pushing outward. Then Crowley was back, in the same outfit as before, except for two things. First, he had lost the clear glasses in favor of shades. Second, for some reason, the black nurse’s cap was still sitting atop his pinned-up hair. “Hello again, adoring fans!” He flung out his arms to Heck and Dean, then promptly fell over.

Ms. Cornell opened the door. She bore a wooden tray (decorated with a doily, of course) with three mugs of tea. The mugs depicted fat cartoony winged babies painting rainbows in the sky. As representations of angels, they were, in Heck’s opinion, rather inaccurate. None of them had Aziraphale’s piercing blue gaze that stripped back your skin and left the core of you bare, and there wasn’t a flaming sword (her Angeldad’s weapon of choice) in sight. “Doctor!” Ms. Cornell gasped, seeing Crowley prostrate before her. “Are you okay? What happened?”

Crowley waggled his feet, shod in the usual snakeskin boots, at her. “Sudden transition from heels to flats,” he said, shaking his head and popping back to standing. “It’ll get you every time.”

Everyone reported on Dean’s miraculous cure, assured Ms. Cornell that Dean was fine and that there was no time for tea, and then subtly maneuvered the landlady out of Dean’s flat. With that, the three exchanged thanks and goodbyes. 

“Come watch  _ Doctor Who _ with me anytime!” Crowley invited Dean. “It’d be great to see it with someone I didn’t have to bribe.”

“You know…” said Heck to Dean. “If you have any, uh, interest in continuing the further murderous adventures of Mercy and Charity, we could always, uh, do it in my room. I mean — at my house. I mean — we could do  _ fanfic  _ at my house. Or in my room. You know. Whatever. Like if you’re feeling overwhelmed by gnomes and doilies.”

“Okay,” said Dean. “And if you ever feel overwhelmed by Nanny and Francis — or Crowley and Aziraphale, whatever — you could always come over here. You know — if you wanted. To catch up. Or do...stuff.” Mutual blushing and fidgeting occurred.

With a last clever avoidance of Dean’s question about his identity as a Time Individual, Crowley doffed his nurse’s cap farewell and retreated with Heck to the phone box. They flew home at a sedate speed of thirty kilometers an hour, no more than three or four meters from the ground. Without Crowley’s humming, Ms. Cornell’s shrieking, her stomach flipping, and the phone box’s hurtling, Heck found this ride nearly comparable to that of a car. She still didn’t want to risk looking out at the rapidly passing world, though, so she watched Crowley.

Her Hellmom hunched over the phone. Tongue between his teeth and eyebrows downturned, he punched keys on the keypad, talking to himself and playing the Doctor again: “If I set the coordinates right, we could be there by tea time — local tea time, of course.” Spinning around on one foot, he faced Heck. “So, hellspawn, I was thinking we should check out Jupiter. We could land in the Great Red Spot and have the best lightning show in the universe! Imagine it: great whirling cascades of clouds in all colors, all knit together with silver and gold and purple lightning, and swept around with burning rain!”

Heck giggled. “Maybe later. I want to know how you made people believe you were a medical doctor, even though you obviously have no skills whatsoever.”

“Hey!” Crowley pushed his shades up on his nose, gave her a lopsided smile, then raised his eyebrows so far that ripply wrinkles ran across his forehead. “You have to admit that I’m better than Little Doc Wellington. At least I know how to talk to my patients.”

“Okay, yes, you do. But there’s obviously a story behind this whole big production. What is it?”

“Well,” said Crowley, leaning forward and spreading out his fingers in Heck’s face, “it all begins at the convent hospital eighteen years ago when I was dropping off baby Adam. I asked the first person I saw, who happened to be Mr. Young, Adam’s dad, if it was happening yet. He says,  _ Go on in, doctor.  _ Of course,” he went on with an airy wave and a curvy shift of his hips,“I promptly forgot about that for the next thirteen or so years, what with raising my dear damnable daughter and averting the Apocalypse and all. 

“Mr. Young didn’t, though. When Aziraphale and I moved back here maybe five years ago, Mr. Young appears on my doorstep one night. Apparently Adam’s having a delayed allergic reaction from being tear-gassed at some climate change rally. Adam’s wheezing, barely breathing, and Mr. Young is crying.  _ Doctor, please, I don’t know what to do! _

“After that, word got out. Mr. Young wouldn’t stop telling people that I was a miracle worker, so really...what was I supposed to do?” Crowley shrugged in a sinuous wave down his entire body and held out his hands in appeal to Heck. 

Thus it was that Crowley developed a side gig in ineffable medicine. R.P. Tyler denounced him as a quack, which actually prevented Crowley from being overwhelmed by patients. Soon the people who came to him were either the desperate or those that buttonholed him in the street. Crowley managed his success rate judiciously to avoid attracting attention from any supernal or infernal head offices, and he hadn’t thought to mention it to Heck before because it hadn’t come up. As for the convergence of his medical career and his obsession with  _ Doctor Who,  _ that was a coincidence that he couldn’t resist exploiting.

“Awwwwww, Crowley.” Heck shook her head as the phone box approached their house. “You really were too good for Hell, weren’t you?”

“Did you just call me — ?” Crowley pushed his sunglasses down and pinned her with his stabby pupils.  _ “ — Good?” _

“You’re curing people of life-threatening illnesses. How is that not good?”

The phone box coasted downward and landed with a gentle bump in their front yard. The two exited. Patting the phone box’s red side, Crowley looked up toward its metal ceiling. “I think I might put this in my garden and train the strangulata vines around it,” he said with a nod. “They’d be a nice sinister contrast with the red paint.”

Heck poked him. “Hey, Mom, are you avoiding my question? Is there some evil side effect to your ineffable cures that I don’t know about? Is Dean — ?”

“No no no, of course not!” Crowley waved his hands from side to side, erasing Heck’s thought. “Dean is fine and always will be. My healing arts have no bad side effects whatsoever either. I’m offended that you’d even think that.” He shook his head as he loped off toward the house.

Heck ran to catch up with him. “So you  _ are _ good.”

“The principles of ineffable medicine,” Crowley said like a sententious tutor, “match the cure to the patient. The ones I like get easy cures. The ones who annoy me...not so much.”

“Oh my gods, you tell them to shovel horse crap, don’t you?”

“Or, you know, torch their priceless collection of antique racist dolls — that sort of thing.”

“You’re not really the Doctor, are you?” said Heck with an eyebrow of surmise. “You’re more like their frenemy with the silly name: the Master. Hey — are you even pretending to be the Doctor, Hellmom? Or are you pretending to be the Master pretending to be the Doctor?”

Crowley smirked with a devilish slant. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”


End file.
